


and straight on til morning

by amandaskankovich



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie, Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:53:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6878134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandaskankovich/pseuds/amandaskankovich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At 12 Mickey Milkovich becomes a lost boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and straight on til morning

“Are you an angel?” He did not say because he had never believed in them. But maybe that’s what he would have asked in a fairy tale version of his life. If he’d been one of those kids raised on them. If he’d had even an inkling that he was in one. The second he opened the window and there the boy was standing on his window sill. He was in one.

She won’t ask him years later when she’ll see him again why he went because there won’t really be a mystery as to the why. They were children who were expected to run away.

So he won’t tell her that the boy had hair that stuck up every which way blond and wild and a smile that made him think of a wolf and how he should have been scared but he wasn’t. How he should have thought he was dreaming but he knew it was real, he knew. He was wearing clothes that looked like they were made out of animal skins. He dressed like no normal person dressed. But Mickey didn’t know yet this boy was not a person. Or he hadn’t been for a very long time.

But still he held a gun and pointed it at the boy. He was twelve years old and he was not afraid but there were a lot of sick fucks in this neighborhood and this kid was just standing in his window sill like that was normal. He had to be insane.

“Who the fuck are you?” Mickey asked.

The boy said calmly, “I believe you have my shadow?”

*

His shadow resting on top of Mickey’s. It peeled right off and began to slink away.

“Get over here,” the boy snapped annoyed at the black, faceless, outline. Mickey could swear it looked at the boy irritated.

“How long…?” Mickey asked.

“Couple of days,” the boy said and then, “I’ve been watching you.”

“What?”

“I don’t usually do this so soon and you don’t seem like much fun yet–”

“What are you talking about?” Mickey asked.

The boy ignored Mickey and looked around at the cluttered and dirty room. At the gun that had fallen to Mickey’s side. He began to walk around but his feet never actually touched the floor. He “walked” around the room, up the wall, until he was standing on the ceiling.

Mickey never once thought he was dreaming.

“I’ve been watching you.” The boy said again.

*

Years, years, years, years later. He’d think about what people had probably assumed. He’d been snatched by some pedo. He was turning tricks on some random street for drugs. He was dead.

This is where they thought he was while he was standing on a pirate ship and listening to the tick, tick, tick inside a crocodile. Waves crashing as the ship rocked. He held a wooden sword to a pirate’s throat.

The boy looked at him and made a cutting motion with his finger across his throat. Mickey always felt something in his stomach when he saw that throat. Something like hunger but not quite. Hunger still felt like the right word though. The boy drew a line across his throat. Mickey made the same motion with the wooden blade across the pirate’s throat.

The blood poured out.

*

“You wanna fly?” the boy asked him from where he stood on Mickey’s ceiling.

“Are you asking if I want to get high?” Mickey asked and then after a minute he said, “Fuck yeah, okay.”

*

It’s not that he meant to leave them behind his sister, his brothers, his mother. He just forgot to wake them and grab their hands as he got himself away. Leapt from the house of horrors, his father’s rage and away away away.

With the boy who had been so dirty and wild and bright and shining.

When he remembered them later he’d hope they were okay.

The boy told him not to worry and that it was okay. He reassured Mickey, “They’ll forget you one day too.” He yawned from where they sat staring at the sunset on warm sand. The other boys looting their newly found treasure chest.

“Human lives are so short.” the boy said and yawned again.

*

Pan threw gold dust at him and then flew out his window.

“Jump.” He said.

“Are you serious? I’ll die.”

“No you won’t. Just trust me. Or don’t.” He said floating backwards from Mickey and smiling that wolf smile, “Just be boring.”

Mickey gave the boy the finger. He swallowed and felt very small. He climbed onto his window ledge.

He never once thought he was dreaming.

He jumped.

*

“I think it was my birthday a few days ago.” Mickey said.

“Oh yeah,” the boy said.

“I don’t remember though how old I would have been.”

“Who cares?” the boy said, “You only have to remember one age. You were twelve when you left so you’re still twelve now.”

“I know,” Mickey said and he sipped the wooden cup of rum the boy pushed towards him.

“I think maybe though…” Mickey thought out loud, “19?”

“Stop being boring,” the boy said, “or you’re not going to get your gift.”

“You got me a gift?” Mickey said surprised.

The boy rolled his eyes. “Well not yet, no. But look at me.”

“Why?” Mickey had finished off the rum. His head was foggy but he felt good.

“So I can see what you want.”

“Why don’t you just ask me?” Mickey asked.

“Because I want to know what you want,” the boy said, “not what you think I think you should want.”

Mickey wasn’t quite sure what that meant but he looked the boy in the eyes like he was told.

“Oh,” the boy said, “Well that’s not surprising. I could have just guessed that.”

And he leaned forward and his lips were on Mickeys and it was everything he’d ever wanted and not enough, not even a little bit.

But that was his life with Pan exactly. Everything, everything,everything, and nothing he could hold on to at all.

*

“You never get tired of being a kid?” Mickey asked, “You ever just wish you could grow a fucking beard?”

Pan snorted, “Fuck no.”

*

He imagined Pan at 20. He’d give almost anything to see that. Almost as much as he’d give to see himself at 20. Or remember his mother’s name.

*

“If you want to go see them so badly just go,” Pan said one day, “but you’ve been gone a long time. They might be dead. They might be so old they can’t remember your name. They might think you’re a ghost, take one look at you and drop dead.”

“But…” Mickey said, “you’re saying I can go?”

“You’re not my prisoner,” Pan said, “I’ve never been the one keeping you here.”

Mickey was quiet. Pan glared at him.

“There’s a difference between being your excuse to stick around and keeping you from going.” Pan said.

He looked away from Mickey, “You can fucking fly in case you forgot dipshit.”

*

“Why’d you take me with you?” Mickey asked him once maybe it was a year after he’d jumped. Maybe it was twenty years. Maybe it was the very same night.

Pan asked, “Do you really need me to explain?”

“Yeah.”

Pan sighed like he was annoyed this even had to be said out loud. “Your life was brutal.”

“You love brutal.” Mickey pointed out.

“Not that kind.” Pan responded and he seemed insulted which was a surprise. Nothing Mickey or anyone said ever seemed to affect him in that way. It was actually amazing. He wanted to do it again. He opened his mouth to say more and push the issue but as if sensing Pan was being bothered a fairy bit Mickey hard on his cheek.

And Mickey got distracted.

*

They stood on a cliff together. Pan pointed one way.

“It’s a long way there,” Pan told him, “and a long way back.”

Pan looked at him, “You might get lost on the way there and if you decide you want to return you might forget the way back. Fairy dust also only lasts so long. So if you get there and take too long to decide you want to come back the decision will be made for you. You won’t be able to fly. You’ll start to age again. You’ll tell yourself this life was just a dream and then one day you won’t remember it at all.”

Mickey listened very carefully to this. He wanted to say of course he would come back and he knew he might. This had been his life for longer than his old one had. His life would be so boring without Pan wouldn’t it?

But this had never felt like home.

He looked at Pan. He was still bright and beautiful. And ancient and impossible. And very far away.

And things would never change here.

They would always be suffocatingly the same. He’d never be more than he was. Just another lost boy among many.

He wanted to hear someone say they loved him. That was something people said. Pan had been so certain but he’d only gotten Mickey’s birthday gift half right.

Mickey realized the boy had been quiet for a very long time.

The boy looked at Mickey and there was something in his eyes he’d never seen before. Uncertainty?

“Do you wish you hadn’t come with me?” Pan asked.

And Mickey considered everything he’d lost being frozen in place for all these years but there was really only one true answer and he could never lie to Pan, “No.” He said.

And Pan grinned that wolf grin.

*

And then Mickey jumped.

And he flew.

*

And then years later on a night that would not be fun as Pan defined it but was not boring at all.

When he looked twenty.

A man kissed him not for the first time while they waited for a cab. The man had wild blond hair Mickey loved. He wasn’t quite sure why he liked it as much as he did, but he did. Every time he ran his fingers through it he felt like he was keeping a promise to himself. He knew it was a strange feeling but it was the only way he knew how to explain it.

And they shared an umbrella and Mickey laughed.

And the cab came and right when he sat down something he’d never thought would happen actually did.

He remembered his sister’s name.

And it felt like landing.


End file.
